What if you saw the world too clearly to live in it?

Watcher follows a man born with a slight defect: unbearable clarity. He times laughter, hears the hinges in every sentence, and notices how honesty is punished while harmony is praised. In college he finds calibrated dissent and wellness theatre. At work—at a firm called Ataraxia—he’s paid to find people like himself and smooth them back into the signal.

Then he discovers her file. The girl from the library who underlined one true sentence per book. ANOMALY-SHAPED. Ceased transmission.

It isn’t a conspiracy. It’s physics. The world rebalances. Outliers are quarantined. If he vanished, what system would notice?

His break doesn’t end in fireworks—just a glitch: held eye contact with a child on the street. A shock of being seen. Painful reentry. Burned awake.

For anyone who has felt too awake for this world, Watcher is a razor-edged, tender portrait of alienation, compliance, and the cost of seeing. Turn the first page if you’re ready to risk recognition.